There is the problem of unpaid labor, such as housework, which represents millions and millions of unsalaried work hours and on which masculine society is firmly based. To put an end to this would be to send the present-day capitalist system flying in a single blow. Only we can't do it by ourselves; there have to be other kinds of attacks on the system. So a certain alliance with revolutionary systems is necessary, even masculine ones.
Simone de BeauvoirWhen women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.
Simone de BeauvoirSometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.
Simone de Beauvoir... to adapt one's outlook to another person's salvation is the surest and quickest way of losing him.
Simone de BeauvoirMy worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.
Simone de BeauvoirIn the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.
Simone de BeauvoirA life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.
Simone de Beauvoir